So it finally has come to this. You tried so hard to endure through the episodes. You’ve tried medications, birth control and a cocktail of pharmaceuticals but now the only option left is surgery. Your Dr. told you that the operational procedure was called Laparoscopy, that it would be minimally invasive and take out the tissue that had been giving you so much trouble. At first, things felt better. The pain subsides, and the episodes weren’t nearly as bad. But then the episodes begin to hurt more and the many horrors you tried to remove are returning with a vengeance.
You are not alone. Nearly 30% – 40% of women go through this experience after Laparoscopy and find that their endometriosis has slowly grown back into stage four. It is theorized that this is due to the endometriosis lingering under the tissue, growing back after the operation. Some choose to try and undergo the operation again in hopes that the second try will be more successful. However, just like the first time it is not always effective, and in some cases, the endometriosis can come back in as little time as a month as experienced by one of our endometriosis support group members.
“My
surgeries used to be 2 years apart & now it’s so fast, they said my
surgeries will start being months apart unless I want a full hysterectomy”
–
Anonymous
This is because endometriosis is similar to other kinds of cellular diseases like cancer. The cells grow at a random rate often triggered by unknown influences, sometimes staying dormant for years while other times growing back seemingly overnight. The best that many researchers can do is predict the percentage of cases where the disease comes back in a set amount of time.
In Sun-Wei Guo’s Academic Paper from “Recurrence of Endometriosis and Its Control” it was predicted that around 20% of the time endometriosis would grow back in a patient after only two years. Whilst in 40% of cases it would take five years for endometriosis to grow back to stage four.
Due to the almost random rate of regrowth we highly recommend that if you feel like your endometriosis is becoming worse, even after your surgery, that you should take this very seriously and speak to your doctor.
Though we can not give exact time and dates for the speed that endometriosis grows back, we hope that at the very least we have helped increase your understanding of the rate it grows back and the fact that it can grow back. But most importantly we hope this shows you are not alone.
Thank you for reading and if you have a story of your own about your fight with reoccurring endometriosis please share it with us by submitting your own blog article above. Sharing your story can help spread awareness of this disease and we’ll send you a free endo warrior magnet if your story is above 500 words!
